Tuesday, April 13, 2010

I Love... Baked Oatmeal

Once upon a time (a few years ago) my housemates and I would host Sunday breakfast potlucks. So for a while I used to make my specialty - baked oatmeal - on a regular basis. 

Then somehow I forgot all about it until one of the housemates e-mailed me a couple weeks ago to say that she was eating my baked oatmeal all the time. I didn't even have the recipe anymore. This appalled her, so she e-mailed it to me right away:


Baked Oatmeal
one banana, mashed
two eggs
three cups of oatmeal
1/2 tsp baking powder
one cup milk
brown sugar or maple syrup
spices
a chopped apple

in a bowl combine the banana, eggs and oatmeal. mix in the milk, spices and sweeteners desires. add chopped apple [if you like]. bake at 350 for about twenty five minutes.

best served on cold mornings in shallow bowls when made by a roommate.


So that's all there is to it! Meaghan says that she's modified the recipe a bit - she uses one egg instead of two, and two apples instead of one. She also uses rice milk, and throws in some psyllium fibre and millet for extra binding power.

When I made this again I omitted the eggs entirely and uses "chia eggs" instead. I would have used psyllium too, but I was having a senile moment. Anyways, it makes a fabulous breakfast or snack food.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Falafel Burger with Taratour Sauce

In an attempt to make a burger that was both "fake and fancy" I settled on the falafel burgers from Rebar.

However, there were a number of setbacks:
  • I forgot to buy chickpeas when I went to the grocery store. Without chickpeas, these would be breadcrumbs, tahini, onions and spices. So I had to go back.
  • The recipe says to roast bulghur and then grind it into a powder in your spice grinder. Apparently me and my mortar and pestle are not as powerful as an electronic device(!).
  • I was lacking breadcrumbs so I crossed my fingers and used one cup instead of two.
In spite of these mishaps, the burgers turned out great. So did the taratour sauce. What I gathered from Wikipedia is that taratour is a Turkish word that means "has tahini in it" - which this sauce does - plus miso and chipotle and lemon juice, making it a great topping.